You might be surprised by who is using social media these days for their business. Businesses are finding ways to enhance their customer experience through business to customer, and customer to business interactions. And it is paying off big time for business. Here are 3 great short stories on how businesses are using social media to deliver great customer service for their customers.

Let me share 3 stories with you that I hope will give you a better understanding of how you might use social media for customer service. I hope this will get you thinking about how social media might improve your business. Now I know one size does not fit all, but I hope to get you thinking about what you might be able to do in your business.

Jeff-Corda-site-eCommunity

Marketing your community to the world

The first story is about a food truck that travels in a big city to sell snacks for break time and lunch. For this example, let’s use Halifax. As the tuck travels around Halifax, customers come up to the truck and buy food from it for break time, snacks and lunch. The owner of the food truck wants to sell more food and help people not to miss the food stops.

Now many of the food truck’s customers work in high-rise buildings. They have to time everything just right to get to the food truck on time. They don’t want to miss the food truck or have to wait too long. The food truck owner came up with a great solution. This solution might take you a second to get your head around, but it is a brilliant solution never the less.

The owner uses Twitter to inform their customers about their current location and to information about any expected delays. This helps their customers get to the food truck at the right time without a lot of waiting. The owner also tweets with the customers along the way. This enhances the buying experience for the food truck customers. If it’s a rainy day, this is even more important for the customers.

Another benefit to this story is this, the customers tweet the truck owner what they want for the next day. This enables the truck owner to have the right product in their truck. Just imagine the truck owner driving home with a truck that’s pretty near empty every day. By stocking the truck with what customers are asking for, the food truck owner enhances his sales by providing this customers with product that they actually want. Who knew?

The second story revolves around a restaurant. The restaurant uses social media to highlight their food and also creates interactions between the customer and the staff; especially the cooks. Customers get to know who is preparing their meals. Customers are imagining their dining experience all along the way. This enhances their meal time experience. Customers were now dining with their friends, so to speak. This business is creating a “Cheers” like experience for their customers where everybody knows your name. Who knew?

Through the course of my social media training, I connected with someone who is one of the top four chefs in this area. I have been trying to do is have him cook a meal specifically for my wife and I. It gives me great joy to think about the process, and how it could unfold. I enjoy our social media and face-to-face interactions with this person whenever time permits. I am sure that my wife will enjoy this dining experience. Social media for me, is a way to enhance the process. I can just imagine how great that dining experience will be at how much fun I will have with this person when we get together.

Another story that comes to mind, regarding social media for customer service, is one that revolves around Eastlink. Here’s a link to the story. I love it when a company solves a customer problem using social media. In this example, the social media team out did the phone team by providing superior customer service. The best of the phone team could do was to have someone come to the hosts in three days. Social media team solved the problem within a few hours.

And by the way, I was not screaming and yelling at Eastlink. I don’t believe that you can get great customer service by yelling. Social media was able to create shorter conversations that helped arrive at a solution faster. The East link social media team, was able to effectively diagnose and problem solve faster. As result of Eastlink’s great customer service, I have been breaking them up on social media as well as off-line. Eastlink’s social media customer service team is a plus to their business.

I suspect that we will see more companies using social media for customer service. In some cases, interactions are faster and problem-solving can occur quicker. Not only that, but a great solution to a problem can be seen by others, and they can benefit from that solution. Social media can be seen by many. A phone call can only be heard by both party.

I hope this gets you thinking about what you, as a business, can do for your customers when you use social media for customer service. See what you could be doing for your customers that would enhance their customer experience. Social media can be a useful social marketing tool that can make more happy customers of business.